‘Daredevil’ season 2, episode 4 review: Jon Bernthal gives Emmy worthy performance
Now that Daredevil and Punisher have a better understanding of where the other person is coming from , it gives them both an advantage when it comes to taking the other down. We saw Matt try to take Punisher to the police at the end of the last episode, but he was able to escape Matt and is back on the streets cleaning up crime his way.
We were introduced to a man named Finn in this episode, who is more then a little mad that his son was killed in the Irish mob slaughter and that he lost over a million dollars to the Punisher. Finn wants revenge and has sent his remaining mob out to find him. When the mob finally meets with the Punisher they incapacitate him and take him prisoner. Daredevil finds one of Finn’s thugs and roughs him up for information about where they took the Punisher – hopefully he gets to him quickly while there is still some Punisher left to save since they are drilling holes into him. When that doesn’t work to get the location of Finn’s money, he brings out Punisher’s dog and threatens to fill him full of holes if he doesn’t give up the location and he tells Finn where the money is. When Finn’s thugs get to the van with the money, they find the briefcase with the cash, but it’s rigged with a bomb and it blows them up.
After breaking free of his restraints, Punisher asks Finn who killed his family and we learn that this goes a lot deeper then just the Punisher’s good will to clean up the city of criminals. Finn gives up nothing and is killed just as Daredevil finds Punisher and they escape together giving Punisher a deeper appreciation of how Matt works. Matt hands Punisher over to the police telling them that they have to take credit for the arrest so that the people of Hell’s Kitchen know that the system works.
The episode ended with Foggy giving Matt the green light to go for Karen leading to their first kiss, but for us the moment was a little weird since we spent a good portion of the first season watching Foggy and Karen grow closer into what looked like the beginning of a relationship – that is until she stopped it cold in it’s tracks after dinners, dates and Foggy saving her life. The amazing thing about Deborah Ann Woll is that she could have chemistry with a floor lamp if she wanted too – she makes it look just that easy no matter what show she’s on, or who she is sharing screen time with. Oh and we had our first appearance from Elektra… more on that next time.
We may have lost the Punisher from “Daredevil”, but thankfully he is getting his own series over on Netflix. At first, we weren’t sure about Jon Bernthal as the Punisher, but by his speech about losing his family at the end of this episode we were all in – Bernthal is just fantastic and it’s another reminder that nobody does villains quite like Netflix. They are always beautiful, tragic, layered characters that you don’t know whether to hate, hug or root for. If Bernthal doesn’t get an Emmy nod for this performance then we we will be shocked. Episode grade: A-
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